City Is Complicit

I applaud the Eugene Weekly for the recent guest viewpoint from leaders of the Greenway Guardians (7/25) and the subsequent community discussion on the letters pages. Though Jacob Fox (Homes for Good) and his unseemly alliance with Evergreen Housing Development Group rightly deserves to be called out for being tone-deaf to the values and aspirations for our community values, the Eugene Planning Department has culpability, too.

While planners talk the talk about protecting the Willamette River Greenway, building affordable housing in neighborhoods that support it (like ours), and protecting neighborhood character in River Road and Santa Clara, the rubber rarely meets the road.

Eugene city planners regularly grant “adjustments” to horrid land-use applications. Then soulless hired-gun land-use attorneys do further damage by hiding behind bogus arguments that neighborhood values and Greenway protections are not “clear and objective standards.”

When will our elected leaders get with it and take actions that reflect that enough is enough?